Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Blake 187: A Zombie Revolution By Aiden James & Michelle Wright

Blake is a zombie – assigned the number 187 when he rose
from the dead after he tried to kill himself to be with his long dead
girlfriend, killed in one of the plagues that ravages this broken, dystopian
society

Zombies are brought back for one reason – to work for an
ever dwindling human population. Kept rational by medication, they exist to
serve as a slave class to the living who regard them with disgust and
revulsion.

Once they have finished rehabilitation into becoming good
little followers of the revered god-like leader of their society (and failing to
revere him is not… healthy). Blake is more stubborn and rebellious than most –and
less able to guard his tongue as they slowly grind him down. His choices, such
that they are, are to be finally broken and become the model zombie they want…

…or find a way to escape, should that ever be possible,
if he can exist without the meds and if the horrors that exist in the waste do
not get him instead.

This is a book of two halves. The first half of the book
I nearly put it down – it was so very close to being a DNF review.

The concept was interesting – a dystopian world ravaged
by plague and disasters told from the point of view of a zombie who had
basically been raised as slave labour – was an interesting one. But the way it
was presented was really rather terrible. We followed the protagonist, Blake,
as he was returned from the dead and rehabilitated.

And by “followed” I mean he goes from place to place
being randomly abused while we were treated to epic info dump after info dump
after info dump. Everything about this book is told there is virtually no show
at all. We’re told about the witches and how they’re oppressed and treated. We’re
told about the reanimation process. We’re told in incredible depth about the
nature of this dystopian world – and it is a really good world. From how
breeding is controlled, to the manufactory sterilisations and the control by
fear and propaganda and shortages and the environmental destruction and a
thousand things more – this world is incredibly detailed with so many different
elements that make up this deeply repressive society. A huge amount of work has
gone into this world building to such a degree that it feels almost like the
setting for an RPG because there is such a focus on every last detail of the
world and how it works. It’s very very well made

But not well presented, because all of this is told to us
in a series of repeated lectures. And no matter how fascinating the subject
matter is, info-dumping is a clumsy way to convey your world setting – it also
includes a whole lot of information that isn’t strictly necessary. Sure it’s fascinating
to learn the minutiae of the society, but a lot of this isn’t relevant – or isn’t
relevant ion the detail that was reached – to actually tell the story.

Blake makes his way through various stages of rehabilitation,
imprisonment and eventual slave labour and in doing so we rarely get shown the
things he talks about. We see abuse from his controller, but very little in the
way of societal oppression against the zombies because we don’t have chance to
see society. The guards could be abusive prison guards and the zombies just
other people rather than an abused class in the society for all the substantive
difference it makes, for example. Again – lot of tell not a lot of show.

In between the ocean of exposition we do get brief
introductions to Pete, Zinda and Helena, the other principle characters and
some half-decent attempts at character establishment on Zinda. But not much,
not even on Blake (beyond a basic decent guy magically escaping most of the
prejudice of his society, Blake doesn’t really have a lot of identifiers to
establish him as a character).

But after that we break out into the action – escape and rebellion
and revolution. The writing is quick, the action well written and the pacing
sprints forwards. It’s energised exciting, complicated full of plotting and
planning and abrasive characters and a whole new dimension to the fascinating,
but slow, information gathering of the first half.

And like the person who can never be pleased, I have to complain that it is
rather too fast. We have a lot of characters introduced in rapid succession
without any real attempt to build them. The characters are in the wasteland
with not a lot of information about what the wasteland is. The characters they
meet seem to be astonishingly quick to accept them – especially Blake who is
very quickly accepted for little reason. I know the reasons presented,
basically because Blake is free from prejudice and basically a genuine guy, but
I’m not sure how much of that was presented to the other characters rather than
just me, the reader, for those characters to then accept Blake on the strength
of it.

But the story really does pick up – and it’s certainly
strengthened by the world setting that has been vividly revealed before then.

Inclusionwise – I can’t recall any POC off the top of my
head or in my notes. We had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it lesbian who basically
existed for a page to tell us that the society is also brutally homophobic as
well, then disappear. Similarly we have no disabled people but the long
exposition did reveal how prejudiced the world is against the disabled who are
considered defective – and the whole selective breeding programme and forced
sterilisation of the majority of the population is designed to prevent disabled
people, or non-perfect people, being born

This mentioning for the sake of establishing oppression
also applies to a lot of the female characters – especially with regards to a
whole lot of rape and sexualisation in the book. Even female zombies are
sexualised and used as sex puppets. Witches are raped, often gang raped – even attempted
rape by zombies who are functionally impotent which seems like a rather
ridiculous extreme to take the gratuitous rape. It seems to be the rule of the
grim-dark, if you want to produce a really gritty setting the quickest way to
achieve it is with wall-to-wall rape without any particular story reason beyond
“It’s GRIM AND DARK!”. Even in the wastes they find a zombie being kept as a
sex slave – and that isn’t even an attempt to establish the world, it’s just
there because… I have no idea.

This book could have been awesome and there are seeds of
that awesomeness there. The world is incredible, excellent and amazingly well
detailed producing a very believable and solid dystipian. There is some
excellent political commentary and some wonderful battle back and forth between
revolutionary hope and historical cynicism that questions just how much a revolution
can change things – and whether revolution is really the answer, or just
finding your own space where you can establish your own home for your own
people. There’s lots of discussion about prejudice and disunity even among
groups that are equally persecuted who still have trouble working together
because of the ongoing stereotypes and lies attached to them by the ruling
power (albeit using fake prejudice as proxies). There’s a great story brewing
there that brings all of this together.

But the execution needs some work, the world building
needs paring down and spreading along the story, there needs to be more show
and less tell and less using minority characters as a way to highlight oppression.
It’s a great start, but some polish and growth on the story will turn a good
book with some unfortunate elements, to an awesome book and potentially awesome
series.